When you know that a move is imminent it’s common for you to look around with a feeling of despair and think to yourself “Where do I start?”

Where To Start?

You’ve spent years, sometimes decades, collecting all this stuff. Your many possessions fill every room in your home and it’s not just the visible possessions; you know only too well that your cupboards, drawers, attic and basement are full to overflowing too.

The thought of having to pack it all can seem overwhelming and the temptation is to procrastinate; but if you act now you can make it all much easier for yourself. The problem of where to start is often the stumbling block when moving home.

Pack What You Don’t Use

The answer is to take one room at a time. Start with the living room and pack every item which you don’t need to use that week. This will include ornaments, books, DVD’s, the pictures on the walls and even smaller items of furniture. It may surprise you when you realise how many possessions you don’t use on a regular basis.

Once the living room is looking barer, move onto the kitchen and pack all those items you rarely use, such as the bread maker, the icecream maker, the wok, your best china and your second best china, the spare cutlery, your collection of wooden stirrers, your cookery books and your tupperware collection. You only need one plate and one bowl for each person, one set of cutlery and the bare minimum of cooking equipment to survive for a few weeks before your move.

Room by room, go through the entire house and pack everything that isn’t used regularly. You will probably find that this means you can pack almost everything you possess, because we actually need much less than we think for every day living.

Now See What’s Left

When you look around your home now it will look very bare at first, but you will probably get used to it very quickly, and may even learn to like all the new space you’ve acquired! A few days before you move you can begin to pack everything else, but you will have left yourself much less to do and will find that the stress of packing is much reduced.

How soon before your move you begin is up to you, but I would recommend starting to pack non-essential items at least three months before your move. This is because most people have no idea how many possessions they actually own and are usually staggered at the sheer volume of their accumulated belongings once they start to pack them.

Unpack or Offload?

Once you become aware that most of your possessions are rarely used and little missed, you may begin to wonder whether it’s worth the trouble of unpacking some of the first boxes you packed. If you’ve lived without those items for several weeks or months, there’s a chance that you won’t even remember what’s in those boxes.

Why not take advantage of the fact that these unused and forgotten items are all neatly boxed up and deliver them to your local charity shop instead! You will save yourself a lot of unpacking time, your removal fees will be lessened and your new home will be much less cluttered than your old one used to be!

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